[goodcompanion]

Hey, that book is only $56 canadian ordered from amazon canada. 3x that much ordered from the regular u.s. amazon. Go figure.

[goodcompanion]

Hi,

About 5 years ago I spoke with someone at promatta over the phone about about my making a potential visit and tour of member operations around the south. The trip never happened. I also have a 4 1/2 year old kid now. Coincidence? You decide.

They sent me a packet of literature, though, I still have it, it has some info on the various designs. I will have a look through it asap and see if any of it is worth scanning and putting on the board, or if there are specific details of how to order plans.

I do also remember that there is some sort of master tome of Promatta and its founder, a Jean-Baptiste Noelle, that sells for about $80 u.s. If anyone has a suggestion about sharing this purchase and the use of the book in a way that would work, I would be interested in talking about it. From what I know of the state of animal power in Europe, there is a lot of accumulated art and knowledge in the hands of promatta.

And Robert, I would still be willing to translate any message to them. I know they have an actual office in Rimont with at least one staff member in it, so I’m sure that we can get a response, once we find out the right way to ask.

[goodcompanion]

The thing that gets me about the keyline argument is a sort of messianic tone that tends to go along with it. That using this one particular technique in conjunction with this one particular method of grazing will send your pasture productivity through the roof, fix enough carbon to cool the planet, cure cancer, and lead the white sox to win the world series. And any other approach makes you a stick-in-the-mud luddite idiot.

I guess I really have to believe that most of the tools we need to create a durable agriculture are already at our disposal. Using them appropriately depends on years of patient observation, and reliance on what we have in the way of accumulated wisdom for our particular place.

Back when Bill Mollison first started to disseminate Permaculture I was living in Australia. The vision then, don’t know if it’s changed much, entailed the modification of Australian flash-flood hydrology in a way that would ideally green the entire continent. An Aussie friend I was staying with then suggested there might be more than a little hubris in the idea. The aboriginals had lived perfectly well for 40,000 years without feeling the compulsion to re-engineer water distribution on the continent. Plus, every agricultural scheme the white man had brought to make Australia look more like Europe had made things worse.

Keyline is (someone please correct me if I’m wrong) also part of this thread of attempts to retool Australia’s arid landscape into something more of our liking, and more capable of supporting our numbers. But which is the real problem, the landscape, or the numbers?

[goodcompanion]

Okay, then.

There’s this penguin, who’s having trouble with his car. He drops it off at the mechanic’s place in the morning. The mechanic tells him he’ll need a few hours to run a diagnostic. “No problem,” the penguin says, “I can just run a few errands in town while I’m waiting.”

So the penguin does his errands. Goes to the bank, goes to the bookstore for a little bit, then has lunch at his favorite diner. Has fish and chips, his favorite, of course.

After lunch the penguin makes his way back to the garage. “So,” he says to the mechanic, “What’d you find out?”

The mechanic looks worried. “Well, mister penguin, I have to tell ya, this really doesn’t look too good. Looks to me like you’ve blown a seal.”

“Naw, it’s not that,” says the penguin, hurriedly wiping his beak, “just a little tartar sauce from lunch.”

[goodcompanion]

@danb 14947 wrote:

You cannot find one instance in the history of the US when the government interfered with what was once done privately and made it run better. Don’t expect better here.

I am no big pal of the Empire, but this is statement is really absurd.

Here’s a list of things that were previously done privately but vastly improved by federal involvement.

1. Suppression of banditry on land and piracy at sea
2. Coordinated improvement of sanitation and eradication of epidemic diseases
3. Provision of drinking and irrigation waters on a more-or-less equitable basis
4. Preservation of wilderness
5. A professional, standing army in lieu of a disjointed approach made up of local militias.
6. Provision for huge masses of, say for instance, workers injured in industrial accidents who would otherwise have been cast aside like garbage by the companies responsible for their injuries
7. A standard nationwide code of law and system of justice, in lieu of kangaroo courts and vigilantism. Civil rights common to all.

I’m sure the list could be expanded. Now, for every one of these points you can point out flaws in the federal approach, but I for one would never want to have to live without the improvements that Uncle Sam has made.

However I do believe that the federal era is on the way out and that probably fragmentation of some sort is in our American future. We’ll lose the good with the bad, and end up with different good, and different bad. That’s kind of irrelevant.

But it’s silly to say that the good doesn’t exist and never did. Like the Judaic Peoples’ Resistance Front in the Life of Brian. “The Romans did NOTHING for our people!” (Except…the aqueducts, the roads, common system of weights and measures…)

[goodcompanion]

Hard to get into someone’s mind for doing something like this, but I wonder if shooting the cows wasn’t as much an act of mercy as of despair, or of trying to make a statement. Without the farmer, they’d be auctioned off quick and cheap and become cogs in the machine that crushes the 50-cow dairy farms of the nation. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it.

[goodcompanion]

Carl and Tim, I imagine you are right. Farming mostly with grass as I do, I’d always wondered about this implement and whether doing this job or having it done, even just once, would be worthwhile.

Maybe in a cheap-energy economy it might make sense for me at some point. From a strict energy standpoint,though, I doubt it could make sense at all, there being so many other things you can do to promote healthy soil that don’t use energy quite so prodigally.

Got me thinking, anyway.

[goodcompanion]

I would not object to British beer of most any variety being brought to me in the field. I worked in Sussex, and there were a lot of smaller breweries down there that all made pretty much the same kind of beer. Amber, not very hoppy, lightly carbonated, room temperature. Maybe some little chunks of yeast floating around a bit. Lovely stuff.

I just watched the clip. Everything seems so incredibly artful, to see it so ably and deliberately captured on film is a real treat. It reminds me of the England that John Seymour is always alluding to, that you can imagine from the text but never see. To see it in actual motion is really special.

The British countryside looks pretty much the same today as in the film, thanks to the national trust and Prince Charles in part, but hasn’t got a shadow of the same life in it.

[goodcompanion]

We here in the U.S. are so much in thrall of corporations, health care being a case in point, that there is probably very little hope for us. Seems to matter little whether the current attempt to reform health care succeeds, partly succeeds, or fails utterly. Either way we are bankrupt in a few short years.

[goodcompanion]

@BachelorFarmer 14837 wrote:

Dang, I wish someone would bring me a cold beer and tea and sandwiches out in the field…

This being England, I bet that beer would be warm.

[goodcompanion]

I have the same thing, KV bottom as well, just without the footlift. It will do the job and last forever.

[goodcompanion]

Jac,

Welcome to DAP.

Rabbie Burns territory–you must be in or near Ayrshire then? What is the state of draft farming like in that part of the country, are there many other practitioners?

I’m from Vermont, but I’m going to Dumfries area in May to visit my wife’s family, I’d love to come visit you or anyone in your area farming with horses. Maybe as a new england draft power ambassador or something.

Best, Erik

[goodcompanion]

Wouldn’t a chisel plow accomplish much the same thing, not a subsoiler, but a short chisel plow? Doesn’t white horse machine make a version of this?

Very interesting presentation of a time-proven device.

[goodcompanion]

@Carl Russell 14331 wrote:

When our daughter was 5 years old she named her gilt Brittany Spears. She never settled when we bred her, so we ate her……. that’s as close as I have ever come.
Carl

I would argue that trying to breed and subsequently eating eating Brittany Spears puts you on just about an intimate basis as you can possibly get.

[goodcompanion]

@Biological Woodsman 14266 wrote:

This entire effort is extremely complex, particularly given the participants are folks that strive for a simple life. It’s a machine gun firefight shooting paradoxical bullets.

How about, it’s like a paper tiger living in a glass house of cards who has cried “wolf” once too often?

Seriously, though, thank you Jason, for an insight into part of the origin of the SFC I knew nothing about. It makes a lot of sense and based on what I know of 501C3s your concerns could figure very heavily into the success or failure of the SFC.

Wow. I think many of us would argue that our government’s efforts to provide appropritate education, affordable insurance, and retirement for small farmers are not really doing the job (is that enough of an understatement?), but that won’t stop them from trying to discourage the SFC from setting up shop in competition.

Is the SFC maybe the least vulnerable on the education front? Nothing like a network or curriculum for farm apprenticeships exists within the federal government.

A little aside–Laura Ingalls Wilder of the Little House on the Prairie series was bitterly against the Social Security system, believed it was the purview of families and communities to look after their own and that federalizing that responsibility would weaken rural society. I think she was even arrested at one point for non-compliance, in the 30s. Just a little illustration that these limits on any effort to self-organize rural life have been around for a long time.

[Author]

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